Charles Finney's THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO happens to be one of my favorite fantasies and is itself something of a short meditation on fantasy. It's a jewel of a book. I wasn't aware it was being reprinted, that's great. The used hardcover editions with illustrations by Artzybasheff are very nice but getting to be a bit expensive. Although having John Marco write the intro strikes me as an odd choice, he seems to write very different kinds of books.

I checked and the new edition of the Finney book is from Bison, who are doing a nice job of reprinting classics, and it apparently comes with the Artzybasheff illustrations, which is a nice bonus. I strongly recommend this book.

I also noticed on the same page that Bison has also reprinted A VOYAGE FROM ARCTURUS, a great metaphysical fantasy novel by David Lindsay. Also recommended, although it is less accessible and much denser than CIRCUS OF DR. LAO.

I started this thread by writing about Clark Ashton Smith, whose stories are sadly almost entirely out of print. That situation is about to be remedied, at least in the UK, by the publication of a new books in the Fantasy Masterworks series called EMPEROR OF DREAMS which will contain the editor's selection of the best Clark Ashton Smith stories. I believe it can be obtained from Amazon UK. Highly recommended.

Thanks for the link to the Clark Aston Smith website, Llama. I've always wanted to check out his work. I'm a huge Lovecraft & Howard fan, and through reading their bios, I've heard about CAS.

Also, thanks for bringing this topic up. I've only been a member of this board for about a month, but I think this is one of the better postings I've seen. Not the usual rehashing of the Eddings vs Martin vs Goodkind vs Jordan stuff.

Since someone was asking on another thread about the fabulous Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperback titles, which collect a lot of authors mentioned on this thread, I thought I'd link the complete list of titles, which can be found here:http://home.epix.net/~wallison/bafs.html

Thought I'd plug a couple of small presses that are doing their part to allow some classic fantasy to remain in print.

The first is Wildside Press. They're a POD publisher and as a result their printing standards are not terribly high, but they're managing to keep in print a whole lot of stuff by the likes of F Marion Crawford, Sax Rohmer, H Rider Haggard and William Morris.

The second is Night Shade Press, which is publishing a five volume set of Manly Wade Wellman's short stories, bringing back the sword and sorcery novels of Karl Edward Wagner's KANE (Howard fans take note, KEW was a more than worthy successor), and has just announced that it will be reprinting the entire oeuvre of William Hope Hodgson. Hodgson is one of my favorites, and the fact that an epic weird fantasy like THE NIGHT LAND has remained out of print for so long is unforgivable. Kudos to these folks for bringing it (and the other Hodgson material) back!

I don't believe THE NIGHT LAND has been in print in the US since the days of the 2 volume Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition (one to be avoided, as Lin Carter actually cut the love scenes in accordance with Lovecraft's view that they were mawkish and worked to the story's detriment). Prior to obtaining the lovely Arkham House edition with the Hannes Bok cover (THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND AND OTHERS) my copy of THE NIGHT LAND was actually a UK paperback from Grafton.

Jeff Vandermeer, author of CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN and editor of the Fantastic Metropolis website, has published on that website a short list of "Out of Print or Rare", and in either case recommended, titles.http://www.sfsite.com/fm/show.html?ed,shadow,3

I mention it only because I thought it was interesting that three of the books we've also mentioned on this thread: Garnett's LADY INTO FOX, Lindsay's A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS and Finney's CIRCUS OF DR LAO.

BTW, if anyone goes searching for Robert "Irving" you won't find him -- it's Irwin. And THE ARABIAN NIGHTMARE is a damn good fantasy as well. Too recent to include on this list, though....